Niche Perfumery Visit (Part 2)

The next perfumery on our list was Maison Francis Kurkdjian. Francis Kurkdjian is a young perfumer and is famous for creating perfumes like Le Male from Jean Paul Gaultier and Narciso Rodriguez for her. Located in the same pocket of Paris as the other two, this perfumery had the same chic look and style. There was a bubble machine blowing bubbles right outside the store window and next to the entry were strips of cloth having the brand name on it laced with their best-selling perfume – Aqua Universalis. The lady in charge of showing us around the perfumery took us through all the fragrances and explained in brief the composition of each. My favourite fragrance was APOM pour homme. The first thing you’ll recognize in this perfume is the beautiful scent of orange blossom. It has other floral hints of white flowers and also some woody and ambery notes. But, the main reason I liked this perfume was because it reminded me slightly of Le Male, one of my favourite masculine fragrances.

After, we left the Tuileries area and headed towards Palais Royale to our next stop – Serge Lutens. This perfumery had a mystical black and purple theme. The perfumes were all coloured and I felt like all of them had a potion-like look to them. Out of all of them, the one that stood out for me was Nuit de Cellophane. A floral bouquet with notes like osmanthus, jasmine, orange blossom and lily and also fruity-green sides, this perfume reminded us of a lighter, slightly more refined version of J’adore by Dior.

Our last perfumery for the day, though not a niche perfumery, was one of the exclusive perfume shops in Paris – The Guerlain Shop on Champs Elysees. The entire shop was decorated to celebrate Guerlain’s latest launch – La Petite Robe Noir (Little Black Dress). They had all the employees dressed in black and small mannequins dressed in black dresses. We looked around the shop and tried on our favourites – Idylle, Shalimar, Jicky and Apres L’ondee. One of the employees later took us through some of the exclusive perfumes that were sold only in that particular store along with a limited perfume which was a reconstitution of the Lily. It was perfectly rounded with a powdery white flower note. The employee then asked us if we wanted to try our favourite perfume on ourselves, and obviously we agreed. She generously sprayed us with some of Guerlain’s finest perfumes and we walked out of the store smelling absolutely fantastic, with a smile on our faces having spent the entire day lost in the land of perfumes, ready for our rendezvous with the Eiffel Tower.  

Niche Perfumery Visit (Part 1)

There are so many experiences you face when you’re living in Paris; Eating fois gras and other traditional French food, having to mime everything so that you are understood by the fruit vendors in the open markets, riding bikes along the Seine River and visiting the Eiffel Tower almost every other weekend. But out of all of these, one stand out experience for me was visiting the Niche Perfumeries that are scattered all around Paris.

Niche Perfume stores are in a different league compared to the department stores like Sephora and Marionnaud (in France) and Shoppers Stop, Westside and Lifestyle (In India). The perfumes produced by them are limited and exclusive. The raw materials used are of the best quality. Having this kind of exclusivity gives the perfumer the freedom to use his creativity to the fullest. Generally when a perfumer is asked to make a perfume, he has to stick to a perfume brief that is provided by the marketing team of a company. This brief in a way sets the theme for the perfume as well as the budget and guides the perfumer in creating it. But, for some niche perfumeries, the perfumer is given the full liberty to create what he feels like without having to worry about the parameters set by a brief.

So there we were; me and four of my friends from ISIPCA – Kajal, Rawane, Nishma and Merve. Merve had made an entire itinerary for us with information about metro stations, street addresses of the niche perfumeries in Paris and also the time by which we should finish as we had a date with the Eiffel Tower later on that day. Our first stop was Colette near Tuileries.

Colette is an extremely trendy store selling everything ranging from clothes to books to make-up and perfumes. It’s located in a very expensive quarter of Paris on a street lined with designer stores and boutiques. On the first floor, in one corner of the store is the section for perfumes with brands like Comme des Garçons, Marc Jacobs, Boudicca etc. Kajal and I, being from India, liked the Gardenia and Jasmine accord whereas Rawane fell in love with the Oud fragrance.

The next store in our itinerary was Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle. Once we entered the store we pushed Rawane, the only one of us who was fluent in French, to introduce us to the lady at the front desk. As soon as she heard that we were from ISIPCA, she smiled and said that she was an ex-student of ISIPCA as well. She gave us a warm welcome and asked us which fragrances we would like to smell. We each told her our preferences – Kajal said she liked the white flower note, Merve preferred perfumes created by Maurice Roucel, Rawane said she wanted to try something oriental and of course with Oud and I wanted something with green notes. My favourite perfume was “Dans tes Bras” which had a beautiful green and floral aspect to it contributed by violet. The lady showing us the perfumes was so happy with our interest in fragrances that she let us test one of them in a fragrance evaluation chamber. She put one spray of Noir Epices in the cylindrical chamber and asked us to evaluate it. It was a lovely medley of orange, cinnamon, pepper and clove.

After testing almost all the perfumes in the store, we thanked the lady for her time and walked out with a feeling of enthusiasm and love for perfumes that we had never felt before. With this feeling we got ready to go to our next stop – Maison Francis Kurkdjian.

Chanel

There are many perks of being a student of ISIPCA. Not only do you get to study about the world of perfumes and cosmetics and live in France, the hub of this industry, but you also get a chance to be completely immersed in this world through company visits. My class recently went on one of these visits and that too to none other than Chanel - the most luxurious of all brands.

So, there we were. The 19 girls and 1 boy of my class dressed to impress and with so much Chanel perfume sprayed on that we stood out in Metro 1 that led us to the company. We were welcomed into Chanel with a gracious spread of croissants, pain au chocolat, muffins, juice, coffee and tea. The breakfast spread was in the lobby which was decorated with bottles of the famous Chanel perfumes like Chanel No. 5, Coco and Chanel No. 19. The walls had quotes, both in English and French, by Gabrielle Chanel herself. My favourite quote – “If you are sad, if you are disappointed in love, put on your make-up, give yourself some beauty care, put on lipstick and attack; men hate weeping women.” 

We were then taken to the conference room where they walked us through the history of the company. Coco Chanel was a completely revolutionary woman for her time and had a deep passion for perfumes. She wanted to break free from the norm and create fragrances that epitomized strong and confident women. She believed in the phrase “Less is more” and put more effort into her perfume rather than the bottles and presentation. In the 20’s, when every other perfume house was coming up with ornate designs and crystal bottles, Chanel had a simple square shaped glass bottle with a stopper. When you see a Chanel bottle today, you associate it with simplicity with elegance and style.

One of Chanel’s biggest successes is of course Chanel No. 5. Launched on the 5^th day of the fifth month and laced with notes of jasmine, rose, neroli (the flower of the bitter orange tree) and aldehydes (the ingredient which gives No. 5 its personality), this perfume instantly became an international hit. It was said to be a perfume that smelled like a woman. Marilyn Monroe stated that she used to always wear a few drops of No. 5 before going to sleep.

Visiting Chanel was like an absolute dream. It was inspirational to see this young woman with a vision create a brand that is now linked to pure luxury. It was nothing but her passion and imagination that led the company to where it is today. And in the end, that’s what you need as a perfumer. Perfumes have always been linked to memories and emotions; your grandfathers scent when you used to sit with him and watch his favourite TV show, the smell of your mother when you hugged her as she was leaving for a party, the smell of your boyfriend/girlfriend’s perfume when you kissed them for the first time. As a perfumer you need the ability to capture human emotions and make them come alive in a fragrance. You need to be able to convert a dream into a scent. It is true that when you sell a perfume, you sell an image, a kind of dream rather than the scent itself. Without passion, imagination and a vision, in this field at least, nothing is possible.